Specialized mounting systems have been necessary for machines and all manner of mechanical devices since the dawn of the industrial era. It has been found that for relatively large, bulky machines such as certain engines, mounting systems must often be developed which can provide robust support and stability to the machine, while being tailored to specific machine designs. Mounting strategies often must further account for the environments in which a particular machine will operate.
The marine industry provides a number of examples of particular operating environments requiring specialized machine mounting systems to properly support large, heavy machines. This is due at least in part to the motion and vibrations typically experienced by marine vessels. An otherwise flat, generally planar vessel deck may experience torsional motion under the influence of wave action or other vibration and mechanical stresses, and in turn may transmit the torsional motion to the mounting systems for machines carried on the vessel. Many engine-driven components have a rectangular mounting format and, accordingly, many engine or other machine systems have four or more mounting points.
Due to such torsional motion, however, four-point mounting systems for onshore applications are typically not ideal for offshore systems. Twisting of a vessel's deck can cause the mounting points of a four-point system to actually move out of the originally intended mounting plane. For equipment having a low tolerance for misalignment of components, inadequate mounting can be fatal. In an attempt to address the above problems, engineers typically take a four-point mounting frame and simply mount it on three mounting members for marine applications. This approach, however, has drawbacks of its own.
In an aerospace context, one example of a specialized mounting system for an aircraft engine is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,028,001 to Bender et al. Bender et al. describe a method for coupling an engine to a support frame which mounts to a fuselage of an aircraft. The method uses a three-point vibration isolating mounting system in which load reactive forces at each of the mounting points are statically and dynamically determined. A first vibration isolating mount pivotally couples a first end of a support beam to the engine, allowing a pivoting action therebetween. An opposite end of the supporting frame is coupled to the engine with a pair of vibration isolating mounts which are oriented such that they are pivotable about a circumference of the engine. While the design of Bender et al. certainly has useful applications, it appears to be engineered for a specific engine type, and thus suffers from lack of flexibility in its applications.
The present disclosure is directed to one or more of the problems or shortcomings set forth above.